§ 6. THE WESTMINSTER TRINITY.

In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons of one substance, power, and eternity; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost, - WESTMINSTER eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son. CONFESSION OF FAITH, II. 3.

The Westminster Trinity, the Trinity of the Church of Scotland, seems to be a lineal descendant of the Athanasian, and to possess its great feature of inconsistency and contradiction in representing three Gods to be only one; unless by "the unity of the Godhead" is understood merely harmony of counsel subsisting between the three divine persons, between the underived Father, and the two Gods who are spoken of as receiving from him their existence. The grounds, however, of objection made to the Scotch Confession, in the following passage, are somewhat different from those commonly adduced against the propositions laid down in the creed attributed to Athanasius.

REMARKS.

"One substance:" Where is the authority for such an expression? What is the meaning of it? What can we understand by the substance of God? It has been explained by the word "being." That, certainly, is not the meaning in which it was understood by the compilers of the Confession. In their mind, it referred to some supposed substratum, or foundation, for qualities; some philosophical, metaphysical speculation, distinguishing the qualities of a being from the being itself; which is totally unknown to the word of God. "Eternally Legotten eternally proceeding: " Here is a distinction made between the mode of the Son's existence, and the mode of the Spirit's existence. The Son is represented as eternally begotten or generated by the Father. This is a totally different doctrine from that of Christ's having been the Son of God from eternity, The doctrine here taught is, that the continued mode of existence of his divine nature is being eternally begotten or generated by the Father; and this mode of existence is distinguished from the Spirit's mode of existence, which is represented as an eternal procession from the Father and the Son. Now, what authority is there for such a distinction in the word of God? Where is there any thing approaching the expression, "eternally being begotten"? The Confession refers to John i. 14, 18, for the eternal begetting of the Son, and to John xv. 26 for the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost; but neither of these passages have

one syllable in them bearing upon such a subject. The former says that the Son is the only-begotten of the Father, but nothing of an eternal prolonged begetting. The latter says that Jesus will send the Spirit from the Father, and that the Spirit proceedeth from the Father. But this manifestly refers to his coming to Christ's people, and not to the mode of his eternal existence. If it referred to the mode of his existence, it would seem to intimate rather that he proceedeth from the Father only, and not from the Son, according to the doctrine of the Greek church. But Scripture appears to me to be entirely silent on the subject. JAMES CARLILE: The Use and Abuse of Creeds and Confessions, pp. 60–1.

REMARKS ON THE ANCIENT AND MODERN THEORIES OF ETERNAL GENE

RATION AND PROCESSION.

According to them [the modified views and more cautious statements of modern theologians], the Father is the author of only the subsistence, i.e. the modus existendi or personality of the Son and Spirit; while the substance or essence of the Godhead is numerically one and the same in all the three persons. But here, too, a difficulty arises of somewhat formidable magnitude. It is this: Father and Son and Spirit are conceded to be numerically one and the same in essence or substance. Yet, if we are to credit the views now before us, we must at least believe that the Father is the origin or author of the modus existendi of the Son and Spirit. The whole reduces itself, then, simply to this, viz., that, while the substance of the Son and Spirit is self-existent and independent, and the same with that of the Father, it has still no modus existendi but that which the Father gives it. But how, we may be allowed to ask, could the substance of the Son and Spirit be self-existent and independent, and yet be supposed to exist without any modus existendi necessarily attached to it? And if that modus cannot by any possibility be even imagined to be disconnected from the existence of the substance itself, and cannot possibly have ever been as it were in abeyance and waiting to be determined, how could that modus spring from the Father, and not come from, or be necessarily connected with, self-existent substance itself? Or, to put the matter in another light, how is it that the Father, being one and the same substance numerically with the Son and Spirit, could have the attribute of ayevvnoía [unbegottenness], while the Son and Spirit have it not? Do not attributes, at least according to the usual methods of thinking and reasoning, arise from the nature

and essence of substances? And if the Son and Spirit possess the same substance in all respects (which must be true if the substance of the Godhead is numerically one), then how can it be shown that the second and third persons are dependent for the mode of their existence on the first? The same causes produce the same effects. If the very same substance belongs to the Father which belongs to the Son and Spirit, and, as possessing this, the Father has ayɛvvnoía, how can it be shown that the attributes attached to this substance must not in each case be the same?... To be the author of the proper substance of the Godhead of Son and Spirit, according to the patristical creed; or to be the author of the modus existendi of the Son and Spirit, according to the modern creed, — both seem to involve the idea of a power and glory in the Father immeasurably above that of the Son and Spirit. MOSES STUART, in Biblical Repository for April, 1835; vol. v. pp. 303-4.

Between the fathers and the modern Trinitarians we mark this difference of opinion: The fathers held the communication of the substance (rns ovcías) of the Father to the Son; while the modern formula represents the Father as begetting only the personality (Vлóσтασus) of the Son, and the Father and Son begetting only the personality (inóσTaσ) of the Spirit. All these formulæ, however, make this radical distinction between the Father and the Son; namely, that the Father is unbegotten, and that the Son is begotten. . . . This symbol, "eternal generation," has been handed down through every succeeding age. But how can they [these statements] consist with the absolute equality of the persons in the Godhead? This we freely confess we do not see, nor have we ever been able to comprehend. The representation is, that the Father is unbegotten, but begets; the Son is begotten, but never begets. Here a capacity — that of begetting is predicated of the Father, which is not predicable of the Son. How, then, can the Son in every respect be equal with the Father? and how can one be begotten without dependence, in that respect, upon him that begets? Is the essence of the superhuman in Christ begotten by the Father?. Then is the Son dependent for that essence upon his Father, and the Father has this one prerogative above the Son. Or is the personality only of the Son according to the refinements of modern scholastics begotten by the Father? Then — leaving out of the question the difficulty of apprehending how a personality independent of essence can be begotten is the Son dependent for his personality upon the Father; so that very little

...

is gained. Nor is the difficulty removed by eternal generation. This may remove an incidental difficulty as to time; but the fact of generation, and the consequences deducible from it, remain. Now, selfexistence and independence are essential elements of Divinity; but derivation, whether by generation, procession, or emanation, implies dependence. . . . But there is still another objection to the doctrine, that the substance or essence of the Son and Holy Spirit is derived from the Father. It is inconsistent with the unity of the Godhead. If there be three substances (ovoía), each divine, then have we three Gods, or Tritheism in reality. But if the Father produced the substance of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and they are "of one substance with the Father," then has the Father produced or begotten himself. — DR. D. W. CLARK, in Methodist Quarterly Review for January, 1851; fourth series, vol. iii. pp. 119–21.

THE TENDENCY OF A DENIAL OF CHRIST'S ETERNAL SONSHIP.

Probably no writers have unintentionally done so much in behalf of the simple Oneness of God, as those Trinitarians who have contended against the dogma of the eternal emanation of the Son and the Holy Ghost; and for his services, in this respect, the late Professor STUART stands pre-eminent. Of all the theories of a Triune God, that which regards the Son and Spirit as persons or hypostases who derived their existence from the Father, seems to be most compatible with the notion of a Trinity in Unity; for, however absurd that doctrine may be when connected with the idea of an eternal origin and of an equality of divine perfections, it preserves untouched the Supremacy and Self-existence of the Father, - the absolute Unity of that Being from whom all others take their origin. When, therefore, writers so acute as STUART point out the total unreasonableness and the antiscripturality of the dogma of eternal generation and procession, they clear at once the polemic field of much of that rubbish which has been brought down from the Nicene fathers; and, by their labors, the question of a simple Unity, or of a Trinity in Unity, assumes a more intelligible aspect. Occasionally, indeed, they may treat of the divine persons, so called, as relations or distinctions in the Deity, to which they do not profess to attach any clear or definite meaning; but, generally speaking, they treat of them as distinct, intelligent agents; and, this being the only rational sense in which the word "person can be used of those who have communications one with another, and who speak and act in different capacities, the question at issue between Unitarians and Trinitarians will simply be, Whether it is more rational and scriptural to believe that the Supreme Being, the Underived Intelligence whose existence and attributes are displayed in the works of nature and on the pages of revelation, is one, and only one, person or being; or whether he-the one only true and self-existent God-consists of three self-existent

persons, equal to each other in power and glory, and each of them a selfexistent God.

Our opinion as to the value of STUART's services, and their tendency to promote Unitarian views of God, is confirmed by the following remarks of a celebrated divine:

There are some who think that the Sonship of the Redeemer consists in an union of the second person of the Trinity, or the Word, with the human nature; and that he became the Son of God by becoming man; and therefore, before the incarnation, there was no Son of God, though there were a Trinity of persons in the Godhead. This opinion seems to be rather gaining ground and spreading of late.... It is worthy of consideration, whether this doctrine of the Filiation of Jesus Christ does not tend to reject the doctrine of the Trinity, as it has been held by those who have been called the Orthodox in the Christian church, and leads to what is called Sabellianism, which considers the Deity as but one person, and to be three only out of respect to the different manner or kind of his operations. This notion of the Sonship of Christ leads to suppose, that the Deity is the Father of the Mediator, without distinction of persons; and that by "Father," so often mentioned in the New Testament, and generally in relation to the Son, is commonly, if not always, meant Deity, without distinction of persons. If this be so, it tends to exclude all distinction of persons in God, and to make the personality of the Redeemer to consist wholly in the human nature; and, finally, to make his union with Deity no more, but the same which Arians and Socinians admit, viz., the same which takes place between God and good men in general, but in a higher and peculiar degree. . . . They who do not believe the eternal Sonship of Jesus Christ, because it is mysterious and incomprehensible (and to some it appears to be full of contradiction), will, if they be consistent with themselves, for the same reason reject the doctrine of a Trinity of persons in one God. — DR. SAMUEL HOPKINS : System of Doctrines, chap. 10; in Works, vol. i. pp. 299, 306, 308.

§ 7. THE TRINITY OF SELF-EXISTENT AND INDEPENDENT PERSONS.

The whole nature is in each hypostasis, and each has something peculiar to himself. The Father is entirely in the Son, and the Son entirely in the Father. . . . When we speak simply of the Son without reference to the Father, we truly and properly assert him to be selfexistent, and therefore call him the sole first cause; but, when we